Tiling geometry to create PBR materials…
Lots has happened this year, some good and some bad stuff and I’ve been neglecting this blog a bit. I post more on Artstation these days, but I like to keep the blog separate for deeper dives into my work. So, it’s the blog here for behind the scenes/breakdowns and the Artstation page for at-a-glance final images and portfolio.
I tried some experiments over the Summer with procedural scattering in 3dsmax to create tiling textures, kind of like Substance Designer but in full 3D. This has pros and cons but I’m encouraged by these tests and will definitely use the technique again. The workflow is basically create a number of models, e.g. stones, pebbles or grass blades, scatter them across a noisy plane primitive using PFlow or Hair and Fur in 3DSMax, then run a maxscript to chop, repeat and tile them along the border creating a seamless high poly tile. From that, the usual textures can be rendered off, height, normals, AO etc and used to create materials. Here’s my attempt at some lawn grass using this technique, rendered in real-time:
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